Born Unwanted: The Rooster Rehoming Problem
Recently, a veterinary surgery contacted us about a rooster who had been surrendered into their care.
Unfortunately, that call was not unusual.
Roosters are one of the animals we are most frequently asked to help, and they are also among the hardest animals to find suitable homes for.
It is an odd situation when you think about it. Roosters can be intelligent, curious, social and incredibly individual animals. They can form relationships, learn routines, recognise the people who care for them and become much loved members of a family.
Yet they are also one of the most disposable animals in our communities.
At Heartbeat Haven Sanctuary, we regularly hear about roosters being abandoned in industrial estates, dumped beside rural roads or released into bushland. Many of these birds are extremely young. Some have only recently developed the feathers, size or behaviour that made it obvious they were male.
For the person leaving them there, releasing a rooster into the bush might feel better than euthanasia.
For the rooster, however, it can amount to a very slow death.
Dumping a rooster is not setting him free
A domestic rooster released into an industrial area or bushland has suddenly lost almost everything he depends upon.
He no longer has a reliable source of water. He has no secure place to sleep at night. He has no protection from dogs, foxes, cats, birds of prey or other predators. He may have little understanding of where to find appropriate food, and he may find himself competing with established animals for whatever resources are available.
Some dumped roosters are lucky enough to be discovered by members of the public.
Many are not.
They can die from predation, dehydration, injuries, exposure or illness.
Those that survive may spend weeks or months living around industrial buildings, car parks, rubbish areas or roads before somebody finally decides to help them.
The obvious question is why this keeps happening.
The answer is more complicated than simply saying that people do not want roosters.
The problem often starts before the rooster is even born
One of the biggest issues we encounter is people breeding chickens in areas where roosters are not permitted.
Someone might decide they would like a few backyard hens and hatch a clutch of chicks.
The difficulty is that hatching eggs does not produce only hens.
Roosters are an inevitable part of breeding chickens.
You cannot hatch chickens and simply assume that every chick will grow into an egg-laying hen.
The chicks are often adorable, manageable and relatively quiet when they are young. Families become attached to them. Then, as they mature, some begin developing larger combs, different feathering and eventually the behaviour and crowing associated with roosters.
At that point, the family discovers something they perhaps should have considered before hatching the eggs.
They are not allowed to keep them.
Suddenly, several young roosters need homes.
And there are far more roosters needing homes than there are appropriate homes available.
School hatching programs add to the problem
School and childcare hatching programs are another source of unwanted roosters.
We completely understand why these programs appeal to people.
Watching an egg hatch can be an amazing experience for children. It provides opportunities to talk about biology, development, animals and responsibility.
But the experience cannot end when the chicks leave the classroom.
Every chick that hatches becomes an adult animal requiring appropriate lifelong care.
Approximately half of those chicks can be expected to be male.
That means a hatching program producing ten chicks may ultimately create several roosters that somebody has to house.
Finding homes for hens is usually relatively easy.
Finding homes for roosters is not.
A responsible hatching program needs a plan for every bird before the first egg is placed in an incubator.
That plan cannot simply be, “we will find them homes.”
Someone eventually has to provide those homes.
Why is it so difficult to rehome a rooster?
There are several reasons.
The first is council and zoning restrictions.
Many residential properties cannot legally or practically keep roosters because of noise concerns. Even people who love chickens and already keep a flock of hens may simply be unable to take one.
The second problem is numbers.
A household might comfortably keep six hens but only one rooster.
In many situations, adding another rooster creates competition and fighting.
That means the number of available homes for hens is dramatically larger than the number of homes available for roosters.
There is also a perception problem.
A hen has an obvious economic function in most people's minds because she lays eggs.
A rooster does not.
When an animal can be purchased for only a few dollars, or given away for free, people can begin subconsciously measuring the animal's value by its purchase price.
That is one of the saddest parts of rooster rescue.
An animal being inexpensive does not make his life inexpensive.
A free rooster can cost thousands of dollars to house properly
At Heartbeat Haven Sanctuary, we estimate that every additional rooster we permanently accommodate can require around $2,400 in infrastructure.
That usually surprises people.
The rooster himself might have been free.
His home is not.
A proper rooster enclosure needs to provide adequate space, weather protection, shade, clean water, appropriate feeding areas and enrichment.
Most importantly, it needs to be predator resistant.
A cheap wire cage sitting on bare dirt is not an acceptable permanent life for an animal.
Roosters need room to move, scratch, explore, dust bathe, forage and display natural behaviours.
They also need protection at night.
Foxes and other predators do not care whether the rooster was worth $5 or $500.
Building safe accommodation costs essentially the same.
This is one of the reasons sanctuaries cannot simply say yes to every rooster needing help.
Love is not the limiting factor.
Space and infrastructure are.
Even free-ranging roosters can fight
Our roosters at Heartbeat Haven Sanctuary do not live with hens and they have access to significant free-ranging space.
Even in that environment, disagreements can happen.
Roosters are individuals. They establish relationships and social boundaries, and sometimes those boundaries are challenged.
A relatively minor dispute can cause injuries.
That means responsible rooster care requires more than simply opening a gate and allowing a group of birds to roam together.
We need the ability to separate birds when necessary.
We need secure areas where individual roosters can live without constantly being challenged by other males.
We need spaces that allow them to see and interact with their surroundings while also keeping them physically safe.
That is the thinking behind one of our biggest future projects.
Our Rooster Village
Our long-term plan is to build what we are calling the Rooster Village.
The initial development is designed to provide safe accommodation for 12 roosters, with the ability to expand the village in the future as resources allow.
Rather than treating rooster housing as temporary houses around the property, we want to create purpose-built spaces.
Each rooster will have a secure enclosure large enough for natural behaviour, enrichment and shelter.
The enclosures will also help prevent injuries caused by incompatible birds being forced to live together.
Just as importantly, the village will allow us to expand gradually.
Twelve spaces will not solve the rooster problem.
Nothing we build ever could.
But twelve safe homes are twelve animals who do not need to be abandoned in industrial estates, dumped in bushland or passed endlessly between people trying to find somewhere for them to go.
Rescue alone cannot solve this problem
Sanctuaries play an important role, but we cannot build our way out of unlimited breeding.
For every enclosure we construct, more roosters are being hatched.
The real solution starts much earlier.
Before breeding chickens, ask yourself what you will do with the males.
Before buying fertile eggs, check whether you are actually permitted to keep roosters.
Before running a school hatching program, establish permanent and appropriate homes for the birds before they hatch.
Their value is not determined by their price
Perhaps the most important change we can make is cultural.
We need to stop equating the financial price of an animal with the value of that animal's life.
A rooster obtained for free still experiences fear.
He still experiences pain.
He still becomes thirsty.
He still seeks shelter.
He still wants to feel safe.
And given the opportunity, he can develop a personality every bit as distinctive as the dogs, cats, horses and other animals our society more readily considers valuable.
Some of the roosters that arrive at sanctuaries have been unwanted almost from the moment somebody realised they were male.
They deserve better than that.
The young rooster currently sitting safely at a veterinary surgery while people try to work out what happens next is not an unusual case.
That is exactly the problem.
Until we start thinking about where roosters will live before they are hatched, rescues, veterinary clinics and sanctuaries will continue receiving the same phone calls.
Another rooster has been found.
Another rooster has been surrendered.
Another rooster needs somewhere to go.
And somewhere, somebody has to build him a home.
